Advocacy is one of the oldest forms of support to someone, a community, or a cause.
On Sunday, April 20, 2025 at 7:00 a.m. EDT, I participated in the unified prayer vigil, themed “Resurrecting Hope,” an initiative by the Lake Union Conference. The virtual event aimed to bring spiritual support and wider attention to immigrant members whose legal status in the United States is increasingly under threat, according to the organizers of the event.
I commend the Lake Union Conference for this exceptional initiative and seize the opportunity to reflect on the biblical meaning of intercessory prayer in relation to advocacy.
Advocacy is one of the oldest forms of support to someone, a community, or a cause. Traditionally, it is understood as “legal services where the role of an advocate in court (as a solicitor or barrister) is to represent the interests of their clients, speak up on their behalf and protect their rights.”2 Over time, the definition of an advocate has broadened to encompass all “people who act positively on behalf of someone else.”3 According to Kate and Tufail, “Advocacy is speaking up for yourself or for others when you think people with power over your life are ignoring your needs.”4
Different types of advocacy exist. Two of the most common are campaign advocacy and citizen advocacy. Campaign advocacy is a movement by a group of people who see something that needs to change, a situation to improve, or an action to be taken. They gather and speak about the issue. They use channels such as street demonstrations, interventions in television and radio, writing to newspapers, and signing petitions. Citizen advocacy is a form of advocacy whereby there are groups of people with speaking-up needs but who, for some reason, are not capable of making their voice heard. Such people need support, which citizen advocates are willing to bring them (eg: free legal services for minorities who are prone to discrimination and abuse).5
In this article, I argue that intercession is a biblical form of advocacy, which I would like to see happening more often as the church in mission has to deal with numerous socio-political challenges.
Throughout the Bible, the word “intercession” is often used as a theological term for advocacy.6 “Intercession” is a biblical term that is often interchangeably used for “prayer,” mainly for prayer made on behalf of others.7 The word comes from the Hebrew pāga, “to make intercession,” originally meant “to strike upon.” Over time, the term came to mean “to assail someone with petitions.” However, pāga got its sense, “to intercede,” when this “assailing” was done on behalf of another. The Greek verb for “to make intercession,” entygchanō, is found five times in the NT (Acts 25:24, Rom 8:27, 34; 11:2; Heb 7:25). The noun, enteuxis, appears in 1 Tim 2:1 and is translated as “intercessions,” and in 1 Tim 4:5, where it means “prayer.” The Latin form of the word intercession is intercedo, meaning “to (or pass) between.” That specific meaning has been applied in 1 Tim 2:1, where Paul wrote, “Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men.” Intercession, in contexts similar to this one, “does not signify praise or petition in general, but a heart concern for others in which one stands between them and God making request on their behalf.”8 Why intercede?
Jesus is our example. He is the High Priest in heaven, always making intercession for men (Heb 7:25). Not only did Christ practice intercession when He was on earth, but He also urged it, even for those who “spitefully use us and persecute us” (Matt 5:44). Jesus interceded for Peter: “But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22:32). In His high-priestly prayer, Jesus prayed for His disciples and for Christian believers of all times, pleading with God to “keep them from the evil one,” to “sanctify them” by His truth, and that they “may be one with God, as He is one with His father (John 17). The Holy Spirit also “makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom 8:26).
Isaiah 58:12 is a foundational text for Seventh-day Adventists. It reads, “Those from among you shall build the old waste places; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; and you shall be called the Repairer of the Breach, the Restorer of Streets to Dwell In.” When Joseph Bates, co-founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, developed the restoration theme in 1847, he used Isa 58:12 as a biblical foundation. Bates said, “The keeping of the seventh-day Sabbath has been made void by the working of Satan, and is to be restored as one of the all things spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world began, before Jesus can come, is evident.”9
However, Bill Knott, former Editor of Adventist Review, wrote: “The ‘breach’ we Adventists are called to repair (Isa 58:12) isn’t only the injury done to God’s law, but the injuries still happening to ‘the least of these.’”10 The implication of Knott’s statement is that the church in mission cannot ignore social breaches in its surroundings. Instead, it should look for ways to repair them.
In my dissertation, Toward a Biblical and Missiological Framework for Transformational Advocacy in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I have highlighted four integrated methodological approaches I believe the church could be the “repairer of breaches” it claims to be: critique, service, intercession, and influence. I plan to elaborate on each of them in future articles. But this one will focus only on intercession.
Through intercession, Adventists call upon authorities capable of repairing breaches beyond our scope to repair. In the face of poverty and social injustices, in the face of the physical and spiritual needs of people, Adventists may not always be able to provide a service, but they can and should intercede.
Adventists should intercede with both divine and earthly powers.
First, Adventists should intercede with God because social justice issues cannot be solved by mere human means alone. This is exactly what the Lake Union Conference through the “Resurrecting Hope” initiative, a call to faith and action, inviting members across the union to participate in a unified prayer vigil.
Old Testament prophets lamented before God when things were going wrong in society. One example is the prophet Habakkuk, who lamented to God about injustice: “O Lord, how long shall I cry, And You will not hear? …Why do You show me iniquity And cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; There is strife, and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless, And justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; Therefore perverse judgment proceeds” (Hab 1:1–4). Another example is Jeremiah. He poured out his grief before God for the doomed nation “O my soul, my soul! I am pained in my very heart! My heart makes a noise in me; I cannot hold my peace, Because you have heard, O my soul, The sound of the trumpet” (Jer 4:19).
Falk noted that God is always looking for “advocates who will stand in the breach between God and humankind, in order to deter God’s wrath.”11 However, Brueggemann suggested that OT prophetic intercessory prayers, besides pleading with God to intervene, were a form of criticism of the “dominant community” and served to energize the “subcommunity” into resistance.12 He noted with amazement “the capacity of the prophet to use the language of lament and the symbolic creation of a death scene as a way of bringing to reality what the king must see and will not.”13 He believed that “grief and mourning, that crying in pathos, is the ultimate form of criticism, for it announces the sure end of the whole royal arrangement.”14
Second, Adventists should intercede with earthly powers on behalf of those whose freedom of conscience and access to basic goods of life and dignity are threatened. Moses interceded with Pharaoh on behalf of the children of Israel (Exod 5:1, 3; 8:1–4; 9). Queen Esther interceded with King Ahasuerus on behalf of the Jews threatened with extinction by Haman’s plot (Esth 1:1–5; 7:1–10). Daniel interceded with Arioch, captain of the guard of King Nebuchadnezzar, on behalf of his companions and the rest of the wise men of Babylon (Dan 2:14–19). On several occasions, Jesus was found in the noble act of being a go-between. One example was when He interposed to defend the woman caught in adultery, preventing her from death by lapidation (John 8:1–11). On the day of His arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, He also pleaded with the officer to let His disciples go, while surrendering Himself with no resistance (John 18:8).
While it is important to intercede with earthly powers, when it is appropriate, on behalf of our church members, I would like to encourage Adventists, members and administrators alike, following on the steps of the Lake Union Conference, to intercede more to God on behalf of those facing socio-political challenges in our communities. Intercessory prayers are the highest form of advocacy, as it aims to tap on divine power to change situations that could not be changed through mere human interventions. Please remember that “nothing is too hard for Him [God] to bear, for He holds up worlds, He rules over the affairs of the universe.”15
Michelet William, PhD is the senior pastor of Maranatha and Philadelphie Seventh-day Adventist Haitian Churches in Indianapolis.
